Posts Tagged ‘rules’

The low hanging fruit for ambassadorship is Employee Advocacy and yet many (not to say most) companies are failing miserably at it.

Why and what to get it on the rails of for many one of the burning questions on the table.

4 golden rules for Employee Advocacy and Sharing

When it comes to Employee Advocacy there are 4 golden and simple rules:

You employees follow your company accounts

There is a culture of sharing

The WIIIFM factor (for the employees) of posts is high

Content is generated by the employees

Let’s take a look at the above rules and answer the question of why and what

Employees follow corporate accounts

This seems so obvious but it is not. Sometimes because companies have not asked, sometimes because of ignorance and even sometime because employee choose not to. Few companies take the time to promote their own social accounts internally even though externally thousands of dollars/euros are spent to get followers/fans. Companies assume employees will find and follow the accounts anyway. But how do you expect your employees to look for them and even going one step further to share from there.

Why not run an internal campaign to promote social media accounts and content as first step to true Employee Advocacy?

Sharing culture

It must be said that some people and even nations share more than others. Us Belgians are renounded for not sharing. Sharing must be encouraged (via the social media policy) and done by example. The management team and the social media lead by example for the rest of the organization to follow. How do you expect employees to share what management and others do not share themselves.

Social media usage (also for private reasons during worktime) must be encouraged but forced upon your employees.

Oh by-the-way, the corporate account might want to share some of the content posted by its employees and this without being told to do so.

WIIIFM

People share if the content they share makes them look good of entertaining to their audience, friends, fans and followers. As a company post creator you should keep that in mind and not the promotion of company products and/or services. Most company post do not hold the potential for people to share and look good!

User-Generated Content

Sharing is a 2-way process and successful posts have a high level of human factor embedded in them. Showing off your employees (and no, they will not be stolen away from you) and their content will make sharing so much more attractive. One step further is using content from your employees on your corporate account will dramatically increase even more the level of sharing. See it as a pat on the back and recognition for having great content.

And then there are tools

Since Employee Advocacy is seen as the golden egg, companies are looking for ways to make it hatch faster. Here come the tools to help (aka“force”) the sharing actions. These tools even come with incentive programs (gamification) to make sharing even more attractive. But gamification will only work so long. In my humble opinion no longer than 3 to 6 months. And yes, internal promotion will be required. Let me clear these tools have their role to play and are a good way to kick start social sharing of company posts but they are no longtime cure. There are a lot of great tools out there to help you with social sharing and employee advocacy.

However, the real cure lies in adhering to the above 4 rules to make Employee Advocacy a success!

Feel free to agree of disagree with me and sharing this in the comment field below.

Looking at last week’s on readability numbers the conclusion was that you need at least a university degree to understand what is said. Meanwhile teens and people who have not benefitted years of education are joining these platforms and accepting the terms without reading. Important to keep in mind that assume that your native language is ENGLISH! What about us foreigners trying to read these terms…

But it is not all doom and gloom. I also want to share some interesting facts I found when reading the ToS of the major social media platforms with you.

Most platforms require you to have a minimum age (13 in most – with parental approval till you are 18; LinkedIn requires 18). However, Twitter has NO age limitation.

All sites obviously have the necessary claims regarding copyrights, trademarks, etc. and wave all responsibility, of course.

Here are some other interesting facts I found:

Flickr:

You must provide TRUE, ACCURATE, CURRENT and COMPLETE information -> A false identity can lead to termination.

You may not impersonate any person or entity, nor misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity.

You can not use it for military, nuclear, and other weaponry.

If you get sick using their product, you can not sue them

You can not transfer your yahoo accounts

Youtube:

Here too you must provide accurate and complete information

You are not allowed to launch automated services onto the website

WordPress:

You must not describe and assign keywords that are misleading of unlawful

Your blog must be named correctly and not create illusion that is someone of something else.

LinkedIn

A competitor may not have an account

You can only maintain ONE account

LinkedIn does not have any obligation to verify the identity but you can not use a false identity

You may not invite people to your network that you do not know

Have a real headshot and not a cartoon or symbol

Add content to fields in which is not appropriate (eg. Title field can not contain phone number or email).

Not to set up pyramid schemes or use LinkedIn to manage these types of pyramid schemes

When you die when using LinkedIn, you can not hold them liable

Facebook

You may not provide false personal information

You can only have ONE profile

You can not use Facebook if you are sax offender

If you use Facebook from your mobile and the number changes you need to update within 48 hours.

No pyramid schemes allowed

Twitter

No age limit

You may not impersonate others through the Twitter service in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others.

You may not publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.

You may not engage in name squatting

You may not use the Twitter service for the purpose of spamming anyone (follow a large amount of people in a short time, repeatedly follow and unfollow people, your updates contain only links and no personal info, etc.)

So as you can see, reading these terms of service might not only prove interesting but also eye opening. You will notice that there is a lot of abuse of the ToS being tolerated by the social media platforms.

Have you discovered other interesting terms which I have missed? I look forward to hearing them from you.